Messier 13 - The Great Hercules Cluster
Somehow photographing the Hercules Cluster has became a tradition every year since I started this hobby three and a half years ago (and actually, my first deep sky object ever was also a globular cluster, the Pegasus). Despite these obejcts are known to be easily captured even from light polluted skies, which indeed they are, I realize now that even these need a dark sky to be properly displayed. And why? Well, while in the central area there isn't much difference, in this photo the outer areas display much more stars than in my previous attempts, which gives "volume" to the cluster; and on top of that, the colour halos around bright stars are more visible, making possible to display it which muting too much its brightness.
So, all in all, I am really thrilled by this year attempt, by far the one I most enjoy.
Messier 13, the Great Hercules Cluster, is the largest globular cluster in the northern hemishpere and is located, as the name implies, in Hercules constellation. It can be seen as a round patch of light in the sky and despite being discovered in 1714, its stellar nature was only identified in 1779, when some of its 100'000 stars were first resolved. It is located at about 25'000 light years from Earth and, along with about 150 more clusters of this type, is orbiting our galaxy Milky Way. However, they were also identified in several other galaxies.
These type of structures are groups of stars with a spheroidal shape and with increasing density towards the center. Despite being studied from a long time, the origin of these structures is still not fully clarified.
Technical details as follows:
Shot at Trevinca, Spain (Bortle 3) on March 24th, 2024
RED 59 x 60'’
GREEN 60 x 60'’
BLUE 60 x 60''
SW EQ6-R Pro | TS Optics Triplet APO 800/115 | TS Optics TSFLAT2 0.79x | QHYCCD 268M | Optolong LRGB | RBFocus Gaius-S | RBFocus Myrrdin 2.3
Acquisition: N.I.N.A. | Processing: Pixinsight